Your SO didn’t have to tell you that he has had a crush on someone, but he did.

And by doing so, he was looking to come clean.

It is hard to see this when you get caught up over him having had a crush on someone else, while dating you.

Notwithstanding, it’s critical that you maintain control of your emotions.

Clearly, he felt guilty about having this crush and believed that he had to tell you about it.

As long as he didn’t act on this crush by cheating on you, there is reason to believe that this is resolvable.

It’s far too tempting to let jealousy cloud your mind upon hearing this news, but hear him out.

More than likely, your SO developed this crush during a period in the relationship where he was unhappy.

He either didn’t communicate this unhappiness to you at the time or did, but you weren’t paying attention.

When you hear him out, it gives you a much better perspective on what isn’t working in the relationship for him.

As human beings, we have a variety of needs in a relationship.

These don’t always coincide with those of our partners.

When these needs aren’t being met in a relationship, it isn’t unusual for the partner who is unhappy to look outside the relationship, so as to fulfill this missing component in the relationship.

For instance, as you are hearing him out, he tells you that at that moment in time you weren’t showing much interest in doing activities that he wanted to do.

The meat of his complaint being that the relationship was getting too monotonous, with him having to acquiesce to doing the activities that you cared about, and only you.

He went along with it to keep the peace and make you happy, but deep down, he wasn’t happy about it.

This created a hole within him.

A hole that he looked to this woman to fill.

He never intended to develop a crush on her.

Nevertheless, she embodied what he was looking for in you at the time.

She was indulging in activities that he wished you would do with him.

As he watched her over time, a crush developed.

It was unintentional and shocking when he realized what had happened.

He denied it to himself at first, but when he realized that he couldn’t help but wonder about what activity she was engaging in, even when he was busy at work, he knew it was a problem.

This is when he panicked.

He quickly stopped watching her lifestyle and did everything in his power to avoid going to any spaces that she inhabits.

After a while, this wasn’t enough.

He was still riddled by guilt for having developed a crush on this woman.

This is what led him to tell you about it.

He could have kept quiet about it but chose to come clean.

This means that he cares about you.

The good news is that, in this example, his crush on her developed out of a deficiency within his relationship with you.

And not out of a loss of interest or physical attraction for you.

By working on fixing whatever this deficiency is, you have a resolution to this.

This salvages the relationship and prevents anything like this from happening again.